MUSIC GO MUSIC

Warm in the Shadows rounds out the trio of three-song 12″s that MUSIC GO MUSIC have released over the course of 2008-09. It’s both a fitting end-piece to the trilogy, and a remarkable expansion of the group’s sonic and emotional breadth. There is a casual, but undeniable magic to these songs, and it flows around and out of each note of every melody.

Title song “Warm in the Shadows” is dance music, as envisioned by a group with a greater allegiance to pop archetypes than to the hymns of the dance-floor. It’s a step in a different direction; an invitation to shake, coupled with a gentle evocation of the pain of wrecked love (“what kind of heart would break so easy as my own”). It’s a case history and a cure for both the lovesick and the lovesick-to-be.

The B-side offers up stories of exotic depravity consuming itself in ways both savage and deceptively elegant. The gypsy rhythms of’ “Thousand Crazy Nights” undergird a tale of dog-piled revelers instructed to “feel with your face, let eyes be your hands” whilst “trapped in desire’s agro dance.” “Love, Violent Love” is a psychedelic voyage through a land of raving mobs who “spiral past control” once their love is at last requited.

This collection of songs is further proof of the power of the transformative embrace in which MUSIC GO MUSIC holds what is dear to them, and the singular vision that they impart to it.

Warm In the Shadows is now available as a vinyl 12″ and as a download in fine digital stores.

Like a bolt from Zeus, Music Go Music have struck again with their new 12″ single – their second of the summer – “Reach Out”, which is in all good record stores now. This outing finds them exploring a darker side of pop music; the place where Deep Purple’s brute force meets the Carpenter’s tragic wistfulness, where Blondie’s power-hooks cross melodic swords with Meat Loaf’s drama-rock theatrics. They’ve expanded their palette considerably, yet the sound is unmistakably theirs, and the magic of it points the way to the light at the end of the tunnel.

“Reach Out” is the monologue of a would-be savior, offering to lift us from the pit of despair. It treks from Logan’s Run ambience to proto-metal riffing to disco-gallop to TV detective funk and back again. “Goodbye Everybody” bemoans the void of such a figure, the immaculate ballad of devastation that the Carpenters’ sense of propriety wouldn’t let them record. “Just Me” employs a Wizzard-does-Spector big-beat that gives way to a monstrous ‘co-dependent no more’ chorus for an ERA-era woman left in the dust.

These are compositions that, again, look backward, but are singular artistic statements in and of themselves. The tropes are lovingly exhumed, examined, and re-animated. Their gratuity is a calculated one, their pathos is genuine in spite of itself. The aesthetic foundation they build on is what permits these towers of song to be raised to such dizzying heights. Searing harmonized guitars and virtuosic organ figures underscore the message of Reach Out’s chorus; “There is a fire in me, I burn with empathy – Dear let compassion reign, call out my name and face the flame.” We quickly realize that, like so many glassy-eyed moths, we, too, cannot resist what would burn so bright.

DAVID VANDERVELDE’s Waiting For The Sunrise is a product of a new sort of isolation. After relocating from Chicago to Brooklyn, Vandervelde struggled to find his place in the new musical community. This seclusion led to most of the album being composed in his apartment on an acoustic guitar. Although Waiting for the Sunrise is a decidedly more rootsy effort, Vandervelde has lost none of the exotic swagger that colored his debut. But this time around the savage is mixed with the sublime in a way that is reminiscent of the classic, sentimental pop of the 70’s.

MUSIC GO MUSIC’s Reach Out 12 inch has the simple syrup of pop extravagance. These arena-sized songs are composed with such savage efficiency that you find yourself humming along before two bars have gone by. They are as assured and crafted as ABBA and ELO’s best songs of ’76, yet Music Go Music sounds fresh. They’ve exploded the formulas from the inside out, sounding like a hundred others and no one else. ‘Light of Love’ is a true celebration of pop music’s potential – laying a thin sheen of magic over the world around it, and making the tedious bits of the human experience a little less so.

On 5/20/08, Secretly Canadian will release the first 12″ in a series of vinyl releases by the band Music Go Music.

Music Go Music have the simple syrup of pop extravagance running through their veins. These arena-sized songs are composed with such savage efficiency that you find yourself humming along before two bars have gone by. They are as assured and crafted as ABBA and ELO’s best songs of ’76, yet Music Go Music sounds fresh. They’ve exploded the formulas from the inside out, sounding like a hundred others and no one else. “Light of Love” is a true celebration of pop music’s potential – laying a thin sheen of magic over the world around it, and making the tedious bits of the human experience a little less so.

Thirty years ago these songs would have been recorded by coke-fueled session musicians and millionaire producers in Nassau or Stockholm for $5000 a day. They would have been performed in huge arenas and played in every mall as the soundtrack to the prom queen’s shopping spree. It was music made by the few for the very, very many. Thirty years on, it could only be re-imagined by a band whose members came of age playing music in the tradition of those that ended up killing it off: the punkers. Now that punk’s branches sag heavy with the crass kudzu of of x-treme ubiquity (Hot Topic, wallet chains, totally-in-your-face Mountain Dew commercials), its old nemesis has become the new underdog. This time it’s leaner, wiser, and has been distilled down to an essence of the bloated dinosaur that it grew into the last time around. There are no wasted notes, no fat, no filler. “Light of Love” plays like the first three tracks of a future Greatest Hits album.

“Speak to me, darling, in hushed tones. Tell me your heart’s true desire” sings Gala Bell on the title track, equal parts Debby Harry, Karen Carpenter, and Kate Bush. Maybe it’s the wonderfully layered vocals, maybe the rich synth textures, maybe their impossibly uplifting nature, but there is something immediately familiar about these songs. At first listen, we’re inexorably drawn into their sphere. For at least a moment, we are surrounded by the halo of their refracted energy – we can bask in the light of love.